1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a custom-decorated giftwrap, a kit for making the giftwrap, and a method of and a system for custom-decorating the giftwrap.
2. Description of the Related Art
Gift wrapping generally involves tearing a selected length of decorative paper from a supply roll, and snugly fitting it around a gift box, typically after multiple cutting, shaping, folding and taping operations. The supply roll paper bears printed decorations designed by the paper manufacturer. One must have many supply rolls having different decorations to be able to meet the need to wrap gift boxes for many different occasions. Even if one were able to select from among a multitude of such supply rolls, the decorations on the selected roll are still not unique to the gift recipient but, by necessity, need to be somewhat generic because the paper manufacturer wishes to sell a decorative paper having a wide appeal to the public at large.
It is known to custom-decorate various products with the aid of a programmable computer using design software that enables a computer operator to create and print a custom creation. Such products include party invitations, greeting cards, gift and name cards, postcards, business cards, decals, puzzles, iron-on transfers, magnets, albums, calendars, mousepads, etc. What all these products have in common is that they are fed as, or on, a flat, single sheet into a sheet-fed printer, such as an ink jet printer. The sheet is of conventional paper stock size, e.g., 8½″×11″ (letter size), 8½″×14″ (legal size), or 8.3″×11.7″ (A-4 metric size). These sizes represent limiting factors in terms of the maximum size of a custom-decorated product.
In the case where a printed product larger than such paper stock sizes is desired, for example, in printing a poster, it is known to print out separate, multiple sheets of conventional size, and then to tape the separate sheets together in a tiled relationship to create the poster. However, the taping together of separate sheets is inelegant and while perhaps, by necessity, acceptable in a poster, is not satisfactory for a gift wrap where an elegant gift presentation is paramount. It is also known to print a banner on paper having a standard width, but whose length is determined by having a user tear the paper along score lines provided at spaced intervals lengthwise of the paper. However, such paper does not have clean sharp edges along the tear line.
It is further known to print large area sheets on wide format printers that are designed to handle such large sheets. For example, photographic quality glossy paper having sizes of 17″×22″ (ANSI-C size) are fed as flat, single sheets into special purpose printers to create posters, calendars, and photographic presentations. It is also known to print on panoramic photo paper having sizes of 8.3″×23.4″.
Other methods of printing on paper products and making paper products are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,996,184, 5,887,366 and 6,095,919.